One Good Turn (ConFuzzled 2010)
Looking back, Steph would have said that there simply wasn't enough dust. It wasn't picturesque enough; her house lacked the gradual tarnishing of time that usually came from picking back through old rooms. Sheets worn with age, air thick with mustiness - they weren't here. It lacked style, and that made her unhappiest, reflecting on just how real things were. The house was emptier than she had ever known it in her youth, and this didn't help her already weary mood. And yet, as she mentally told herself, these things never happen at a good time.
The search for her father's paperwork had been easy, and as night fell the lady just looked for her own curiosity. The candle lamps were lit, and her brown hair waved untidily around as box after box was opened, pondered upon, and then laid back where it had sat. Many contained bits of metal in various shapes, and other parts and consequences of machinery lay dotted around the untidy bedroom, steam pipes and springs and valves. Dad had always fancied himself an inventor, playing with the most modern of technology - except for electricity, which almost everyone else ignored these days as well. A truly unstable substance, it could never amount to anything. Steph could hear him saying so, deep in her thoughts, and it took the edge off her weariness.
Another box rattled with the sound of familiar metal, and as per her routine, it was opened. Unusually, her father had taken great pains to keep the contents of this box - and she removed the paper and soft textiles that padded the inside. Something small and shiny fell into her hands, sparkling like silver. It was a clockwork key, without pattern or detail, with a square point and two comfortably sized holds. A memory stirred in her mind, and she continued to unwrap the protective layers in the box.
Clockwork animals had been a very popular item back when she was younger. The finest artisans from all over the continent had combined their wits and their skills to produce the most ingenious brass editions of everyone's favourite pets. She would know, since she used to have one - and sure enough, there it was. Curled up like a babe in swaddling clothes, the years had not touched it very much at all. Its body was lightly scuffed, and years of well-worn activity had left the occasional mark.
Although curled like a kitten, it was larger than all but the heftiest of house cats. Hard brassy plates fit imperfectly together, allowing for its body to move. Within the gaps rows and layers of cogs and springs lay in such a pattern to confuse and disorient the untrained eyes. Thin rods provided the main support for four nimble, articulate legs, with larger paws at the back and thinner ones at the front. Most of the scuffing was here, the toll of a lifetime of active scampering across all manner of floors and unsuspecting surfaces. The gentle mesh of silver and brass shone as two different colours of light, but nowhere quite showed it as well as the tail, where the two interleaved and a cunning ball-joint allowed it full motion.
Steph placed the delicate construct upon the bed. This was particularly strange, since she hadn't found anything else that was hers in her father's room. He had given her the cat, though, and he had made it himself; it was better than the mass market produce of the day, and probably still more accurate than today's models. That had been her father's guiding principle, all right. Not a thing out of place, he might have said. All must be perfect. Shame that was impossible, she thought. Perhaps they would have been better friends before she left.
An idle curiosity nibbled at her mind, and she chose to sate it, inserting the key into the smooth hole on her cat's back, and winding it up. Carefully at first, but then more smoothly as she got used to it once more. Listening to the rattle of ratchet and springs did much to ease the silence, replacing it with a familiar noise. It would be interesting to see if her old toy still worked after all this time, and she tried to imagine; just how long it had been in this box?
With a wriggle and a click, its bright eyes opened, lit with a reflective glow. It recognised her immediately, bouncing up and down and then surprising her by speaking, in rather a tinny way.
"Stephanie!", it called to her. For a brief moment, she was eight again, and this moment in time had happened once before. It called her by her full name when it first met her, too. But the illusion gave way, and she again focused on the fake feline.
"I'm glad you found the key again. You got tall," it admitted. In honesty, the toy had no gender, and it tried so very hard not to have on its voice too, but in truth, he was a he, a confident and playful tomcat. Stalking around the bed, gears whirred as he crawled into the box where he had laid quietly for so long. Steph had to marvel at her dad's creation, for his movements and questions seemed to contain an eerie awareness of his surroundings.
"Where was it?" he asked, suddenly, metal head doing a 180 in a most uncanny manner. She shook her head, and she had to admit she didn't know where it had gone, all those years ago. The key was here now though, it just came with the box. "I knew you'd find it."
Memories began to stir, distant thoughts she rarely saw need to revisit. They had spent lots of time together, her cat and her. He didn't have a name, because he was unique among felines and neither of them had any confusion who was who. And oh, how they had talked. The more adult reasoning within her mind had a problem with this; it said, how can a toy be that articulate? Were her memories playing tricks on her?
"I'm sorry about Dad," he said, quite suddenly. Steph made a quiet little yelp, and then sat down on the bed. The cat wandered over, an eye half closed, looking concerned. He would ask if anything was wrong, and she wouldn't have an answer. By what science did a toy possess the capability for reason? For concern? The greatest artificial thinkers of the age had barely mastered calculus. Her cat seemed almost alive, and that possibility scared her.
Unruly visions of her past refused to stay down. The cultural waves of her youth passed by as quickly as the moon. Things were in, and things were out, and a blossoming Steph was at that age where it was very easy to do as the crowds wished. Toys were so childish, of course, and everyone was into racing powered vehicles. A few bright cogs ignored the rest and set their sights on the air. The life of her ambitious friends quickly reminded her of her father.
"What's wrong?" the cat asked again. His appearance had always been irresistible, naturally enjoying the care and attention she gave. Yet he had given mild, heartfelt pleas and gentle patient silence when she announced that his clockwork key had gone missing. To go still was a terrible, trembly, frightening idea, but he knew deep down that Stephanie would come through eventually.
"I didn't lose the key," she admitted, quietly. The next words stuck in her throat, but she got them out. "I hid it."
He froze, gears coming to a pause while he took that fact in. To fill the awkward silence she spoke more, about how she didn't know, about how clockwork cats were /usually/ just toys. She had felt bad then, even without this new possibility that he was somehow alive. That, somehow, it always had been. Yet it seemed to make sense, in a way that stung deep in her stomach.
"I can't believe you'd let me run down!" he howled, with ears flat and eyes wild. That was the first time it ever felt angry. It was a bad feeling, like getting one's tail caught in the door, and the cat didn't much enjoy it. So much so, that he softened pretty much immediately. After all, he was moving about again, right? Didn't that fix everything?
No. She was up on her feet, making haste for the door. Being yelled at did not help her mood, even with the instant apologies coming from behind her. Things were all moving a bit fast right now, and the cat broke out into a run. His metal feet did not properly catch the vinyl flooring, and Steph had to watch as her cat smoothly glided off the edge of the upper storey staircase, and plummeted to the wooden floor below. A sickening crash of metal and bouncing springs shook through the house like a fallen sack of coins.
After the shock left her, she knew then that this would not do.
#
When the cat awoke, he was laid flat on a table, the room dark save for a single candle lamp lighting it up in its two brilliant colours. Steph turned the key and leaned in closely, jumping and getting a bit of a shock when shiny paws lifted to touch her face. She looked happy, and she sank back into the old chair with a deep and satisfied sigh, still licking a small cut opened on her finger. The cogs that made up his inner workings glistened with newness, for new is what they were, and his whole body rocked and clicked with a sense of unfamiliarity.
"You got old, Stephanie," he stated, gently rising to his paws. Her hands hovered nearby, but he did not stumble.
The woman was not nearly as good with the machinery of the world as her father had been. She explained the years, how she'd collected all its pieces up and salvaged what she could. With some little offers of help, it had been mostly her and the notes left in the basement workshop, where originally her cat was made. Dark hanging lamps swung lightly from an outside breeze, and the whispered outline of unfinished schematics sprawled across a pin board, overflowing onto the wall nearby. Now, her fingers were numb, and she was content.
Her dad had been a genius, and she had just been lucky. Many parts had to be designed from scratch, and some she could acquire from outside, but the rest she needed to find herself. It had not felt like such an onerous task at first, but the years fell like raindrops and cog wheels, to the point that she barely noticed. Quite how her cat was anything more than the sum of his parts was still beyond her, but now he was awake and mobile, she could fix her old wrongs.
"I had to say I was sorry," she said. "Now it can end better. You can leave if you want."
It seemed amazing to the clockwork feline that she would have devoted such time to his repair after the scare and misunderstanding they had just had, and doubly so she could even ask that question. Naturally there was no other feeling in mind but to accept the apology, and with their mutual overreactions behind them they tried to pick up where time had left them so many years before.
#
"I never asked how I was made," he considered one day, when the sun hung low over the horizon, and the clouds were scattered by dirigibles, their candles in parabolic mirrors lighting up the sky. It was his time of the year to be wound up, gears and wheels juddering as the woman turned and turned. "Dad was not very talkative. Do you have any better ideas?"
The optimistic Steph attempted to begin the conversation, but very quickly found herself out of ways to explain it. She did not know, and that all of his parts fit together so nicely was the only thing she could explain. Even then, some details were years old and eluded her.
And yet the niggling thoughts lingered, like rust does. Dissatisfaction built up until it became too much, and the clockwork cat went on a prowl of the house, down in the old workrooms where Steph tended not to spend much of her time any more. His impatient, eager mind looked for distraction, picking through his own schematics like people might peek through baby photos. His paws were not made for sifting through paper, and his eyes were not made for reading so much. Yet the more he learned, the more bouncy he became; a definite spring was in his step.
Eventually the woman came down to the workrooms, having ruled out everywhere else in the house. The lights were dim, the oil in them needed replacing. Swiftly, she felt the familiar paws on her back, the rattly weight on her shoulder. The unfamiliar rag placed firmly over her face was thick with the ominous stuff she knew as 'sweet oil', diethyl ether. Her hands pulled at the clockwork tail that held it there, but his hold was firmer than her grip. A potent drug, and - as her mind recalled while the feeling drained from her arms and legs and then from her thoughts too - it was also a very good anaesthetic.
#
The world felt like a mistake when Steph next awoke. It was an accident of timing; perhaps a few more hours and she would be good to go. Everything was stiff and she felt the need to curl up and hide from it. The recollections of her mind seemed imaginary, as her cat sat there, perched on his back legs, looking her over with his infamous smile. He was a lot bigger up close.
She was a lot smaller up close, too. Her eyes clicked and looked away, down the small and oddly familiar plates of metal that made up her body, the gently twitching limb that was her tail, and the paw-digits that sprang open and closed when she tried to tell her fingers to do that. The newer clockwork cat eyed the older one, her metal ears sank, and her tinny voice whimpered, barely holding back the rush of things she desperately wanted to say. However, he spoke first.
"I couldn't stand to watch," he answered, to her unspoken thoughts. "So I fixed you up, good as new. Friends don't let friends run down."
The constant ticking would take some getting used to, but she had plenty of time for that.